


Achilles and the Rule of Law

by nonky



Category: Nancy Drew (TV 2019)
Genre: Gen, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:40:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21573892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonky/pseuds/nonky
Summary: "No one is getting locked up. I just need you to understand why I'm being so overbearing. You can't get caught doing anything else, Nancy. We not only have to explain the morgue break-in, but we have to give them nothing else to hold against you. I'm allowed to represent you, but a judge will probably not look on it very well. The law likes a wide buffer between family life and official representation at a trial. If you can follow these rules for me, it won't go to trial. All that stuff you know looks bad becomes incidental if no one's asking about it."Spoilers up to episode 7 and promos for episode 8.
Relationships: Carson Drew & Nancy Drew
Kudos: 7
Collections: Nancy Drew TV Series (2019)





	Achilles and the Rule of Law

The interruption of the phone call was the crisis Nancy had known it had to be. She rose from the table when her father broke the news of the accident. Laura Tandy and Ace were going to the hospital. Nick had driven up to the crash site and been directed to turn back. He'd called her first, despite the breakup. It was a split second of hopeful warmth in a rush of cold fear.

"Sweetheart, we should go to the hospital," Carson said, going around the kitchen and checking the stove was off. "I'll drive you. Get your purse and shoes. Bring a sweater."

She wasn't clear on Ace's family life. She knew he had relatives, but not if they were in town or living with him. It hit her sourly, that she rarely asked anything about people just to get to know them. She was too busy working around them to confirm alibis or pry. 

"Nancy? I know you must be upset, but you'll want to be there."

She couldn't do anything, but she did want to be there. Ace was a friend. George and Bess would turn up once Nick had called them. It was what good people did in an emergency. 

She wasn't sure if the Drews were good people. Nancy put on her shoes and tried to read her father's mood. He was moving quickly, ushering her out to see an injured friend. He gave her a few concerned glances as she followed him out the door. 

In the hours of waiting that followed, she recalled her hatred of hospitals. Conversations didn't work inside such white walls, stinking of disinfectant. Living people were messy. Clutter was normal. A desire for colour and useless items was normal. Sterile, aggressively plain surroundings made her nervous. Nothing to look at made Nancy's mind push mental images of worst case scenarios. 

Their vigil stretched out. Nick arrived and they had hugged, nearly kissing before he gave her a tiny shake of his head to remind her things had changed. Bess and George showed up together. They were only just past the scare of the seance, barely into the merciless start of a new day. 

There was hope, but not much. Nancy sat in the corner of the waiting room, trying to find some stability in keeping her body as symmetrical as possible. She registered an unnamed doctor's update in silence. They should go home. Ace was critical. He didn't have permission from next of kin to say more than that. 

She went home with her father, and back to the kitchen to begin cleaning up. Carson stopped her with a gentle grip, and a soft, whispered, "I'm sorry, Nancy. Go to sleep. I'll do this."

She lay in bed until morning, and rose when she heard her father up. Nancy showered and went downstairs. She should text George and ask about her shift later. She should push for an answer from her father about Lucy Sable's death. 

"You never answered," she told him, warming her hands with a coffee that would upset her empty stomach. 

"I'm not going to answer that. You're my daughter and I love you. I hope you believe I'm a good person," he said. "But if you don't, you have to believe I'm a good lawyer. If I was guilty of something like that, your knowing makes you an accomplice after the fact. The statute of limitations doesn't apply to murder. You would carry that burden the rest of your life."

Carson seemed to have prepared for the conversation, though. He took out a legal pad and had a set of notes scrawled across the page. 

"To that end, I need to know a few things. Do you believe I can provide you with legal counsel, or should I be suggesting replacements?"

He was obviously going to be the lawyer who would do the most for her, and Nancy shook her head in astonishment. 

"What is this? Do you not want to represent me," she asked. 

"I feel it best if I do, but you're my client, and I can't force you to keep me on," he said. "If you want someone else, switching now gives that person time to take over from me and give you a good defense. We don't want to delay things unless we really can't help it. Judges consider it an unofficial black mark."

It felt squalid and evil to talk about her legal trouble when Ace might be dying. Nancy couldn't imagine starting over with another lawyer, a stranger to scrutinize her mistakes. 

"I want you to be my lawyer."

He would protect her to his own cost. She knew that about him. She'd seen him pour hundreds of hours of time he couldn't possibly hope to bill for into cases without any personal connection. She had never doubted him professionally.

Carson pushed the notes to her, and she tried to read them. They were a baffling list of actions, most of which asked her to do nothing and leave no impressions of her real reactions. 

"If I'm staying on, we need to discuss our strategy. I have to prepare as if the judge will allow criminal trespassing and obstruction of justice, which are felony charges. Prison time is likely with a guilty plea, but lesser charges might come with some talks to the prosecutor," he told her. "Do not talk to anyone in law enforcement without me, even if they tell you it's off the record. There's no such thing once you have outstanding charges."

She tried to imagine herself in a prison jumpsuit, and it felt too much like a bad Halloween costume. Nancy forced her eyes to follow the rest of the notes. 

"You're going to talk about our family to the judge," she said faintly. "What about us?"

"About your mother, and the hard time we had losing her. If I need to, I'll find a witness in the medical field to testify about grief, survivor's guilt and post-traumatic stress."

He wasn't calling her crazy, but he wanted her to agree to the role. It was a good excuse and sometimes worked. She'd get probation and court appointed therapy. Courts didn't like to be seen picking on the barely legal with obvious emotional vulnerabilities.

"Detective Hart has agreed to testify to your character, and to speak about the aspect of vigilantism in what you're accused of doing. I think she can paint it as a reaction of a young, recently bereaved person who felt compelled to find sense in a senseless death."

Karen Hart, his girlfriend and a former friend of Lucy Sable, was going to speak to her good character and misguided intentions. Another person to call her unstable, and make her look like she hadn't been able to choose her own actions for herself. Nancy didn't like the tone of the argument. She was somehow supposed to cooperate by taking responsibility, but not as herself. She had to be weakened and irrational, and meekly allow people to undervalue her opinions and the evidence she'd found. 

"Isn't this all - it's going to make them disbelieve anything I say I found out," Nancy said. "And some of that evidence has since gone missing."

Carson nodded, but he kept talking as if her worry was beside the point. 

"It would be better to show you were working and saving for college, and I understand finding a different job might be problematic right now. You have to work at The Claw and come home. Don't hang out with the other staff too much. No poking around to see if Ace's accident was something else. Let the police work on it."

Nancy thought it was more likely she'd end up watching another unsolved case get shoved into a file box. Ace was a disgraced informant who hadn't been doing his part to tip off Chief McInnis. Laura Tandy had launched a smear campaign against Horseshoe Bay Police Department and the chief.

Nick had done an oil change on Laura's car recently, and he might be able to figure out if the accident was authentically unrelated to anything else. But Nancy couldn't be part of that if she was going to be presenting herself as a compulsive, troubled youth who was losing herself to grief. 

She felt like the black mark on her father's life, another privileged person he had to run after and fix missteps that danced mud on the laws he swore to uphold. Whether it was Ryan's pushy whining for his inheritance, or Celia's returned favours, Carson had no time to himself. He must have barely had time for normal clients with typical problems. All his days were weird, morally taxing and grown over with tangles of vines that linked back to his family tree through her arrest. 

"I'd like to say I'll be around to help all the time, but I might have to make a lot of business trips. A case like this is expensive, and Ryan needs me to handle his estate," Carson said wearily. He reached across the counter and turned the page. 

"This is the stuff you need to know about our finances. I might ask you to put through a mortgage payment while I'm gone, or be away long enough you're going to need to do the grocery run or pay some other bills. You keep saving what you make. Use these accounts. The PIN for all of them is your mother's birth date and her favourite holiday. You know it?"

Nancy nodded, but she was cold inside. He was talking now like he'd be gone a lot longer than a week or two. She couldn't help thinking he might be planning something drastic to redirect legal trouble from her to himself. 

"Dad, you're scaring me. You're talking like - maybe if things go badly it won't be me getting locked up. I meant it about protecting you. Tell me what to say, or what to forget I've seen. Give me that strategy and I'll follow both of them exactly," she said hurriedly. 

He shut his eyes, hunching with his mouth pressed tightly closed. When he looked at her, she could see the effort it took to meet her eyes and fake bravery.

"No one is getting locked up. I just need you to understand why I'm being so overbearing. You can't get caught doing anything else, Nancy. We not only have to explain the morgue break-in, but we have to give them nothing else to hold against you. I'm allowed to represent you, but a judge will probably not look on it very well. The law likes a wide buffer between family life and official representation at a trial. If you can follow these rules for me, it won't go to trial. All that stuff you know looks bad becomes incidental if no one's asking about it."

And that was when Nancy knew the cover-up was happening without her, started long before she knew to suspect, and grown larger to protect her under the same umbrella as the Hudsons. Carson Drew had something to hide. She'd had a moment where he might have told her, and lost her courage. He was on his guard now, even with her. If she really needed to know what he'd done, Nancy would have to do it without his cooperation. 

Anyone else might threaten or even try to hurt her to scare her off. Her father wouldn't do that. What he was doing instead was worse. He was telling her, phrasing it in stabbing implications, that her guilt would lead to his own. He would sacrifice himself to get her freedom, but that would leave her alone in the world. 

He was warning her he would choose to abandon her before he let her future be taken away. She was his moral failing. She was the breaking point where his fragile emotions met the professional conflicts of working for a family they both knew had done terrible things. 

If the charges stuck, and the sentence came down hard on her, Carson Drew would be the one broken.

"I'm going to try, Dad," she told him tearfully. "I really mean it this time. And I know you might have to be away, but please don't leave me. I need you. I can handle you going, but you have to come back."

Maybe she was as frail as they were making her out to be, because she had to catch herself on the edge of the counter as she stood up, using it to guide her around to cling to him and wrinkle his suit. Carson put his hands on her head, kissing her hair and hugging her back just as fiercely. 

"It's not going to come to that."

The worst of it was she believed him. He would find a way, through other people and the laws that had a legitimate claim to some of her years.


End file.
